whipstock

plural whipstocks

1. The stock, or rigid handle, of a whip.

   Jerry gave one terror-stricken look, wound his reins round the whipstock, and, leaping from his seat, disappeared behind a convenient tree.

   1895, Kate Douglas Wiggin, “The Eventful Trip of the Midnight Cry”, in The Village Watch-Tower, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 216

   3 more examples

   He had need mean better than his outward show Can any way speak in his just commend; For by his rusty outside he appears To have practised more the whipstock than the lance.

   c. 1607–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, [George Wilkins?], The Late, and Much Admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. […], London: […] [William White and Thomas Creede] for Henry Gosson, […], published 1609, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii]

   […] cowherds and carters had goads and whipstocks of quicken-wood, to counteract the witch who could bring the team to a standstill, whence the old sayings: Woe to the lad Without a rowan-tree gad, and: If your whipstock’s made of rown You may ride through any town.

   1913, Elizabeth Mary Wright, chapter 14, in Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore, Oxford University Press, page 234

   He liked to have [the axe-helve] slender as a whipstock, Free from the least knot, equal to the strain Of bending like a sword across the knee.

   1917 September, Robert Frost, “The Axe-Helve”, in The Atlantic Monthly, page 339

   Synonyms: whipstick

2. broadlyThe driver of a carriage.